Windows XP forums vs. Gentoo forums...

Ranma · n00b Joined: 11 Sep 2002 Posts: 61

I just went to www.annoyances.org and looked around their entire site and I've noticed that it contains a lot of help-tutorials on simple trivial stuff that we take for granted like the ability to turn off something or uninstall a program without our OS reinstalling it when it notices it's gone (*ahem* MSN Messenger *ahem*). Also, the questions are really on an elementary level compared to Gentoo questions. There's none of the usual "I can't see my desktop!" or "My links don't work!" in the Gentoo forums, more often you see "I can't get this program to compile!" or "I have problem with so-and-so daemon or mod or kernel or anything else for that matter." It seems to me that users of Gentoo seem to be more stressed out and experience more "technical" problems as an expense to the greatly added advantage of a more stable and customizable operating system. I myself only use Windows when I want to play games; Linux has all the every-day apps that Windows has, plus more. Because of Linux's "developer" environment, people who use it tend to know a LOT more than those who use Windows, but those who use Windows seem to have life a lot easier. I took two days to get my sound working once I realized that you can't modprobe and compile it into your kernel at the same time (newbie mistake, heh) but sound was working perfectly fine when I installed Windows (not to mention also a lot of apps I DIDN'T want working *ahem* MSN Messenger *ahem*). But anyways, I'm rambling...basically I wrote this post to say, what are your views towards the simplicity of Windows but the reduced amount of control over their OS vs. the power of Linux but at the expense of increased hardships working with it?

de4d · Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2002 1:34 pm Post subject:

... get used to it ^^
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Instinct · n00b Joined: 02 Aug 2002 Posts: 74

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. Yes Windows is built around letting the common idiot run a computer. To me this is good and bad. Only in the past year have I gotten away from windows, and while it may be easier the limitations of the OS make linux a better solution for me. And that's just it, it comes on a personal basis. Currently I wouldn't set my mom up on a linux based computer because she would run into weird problems, and then there is the fact that she would have to learn all new accounting/financial programs, and not have technical support when something went wrong.

I like to think of moving from windows to linux like learning a foreign language. Very little previous knowledge can be carried over... I still remember spending over an hour trying to figure out how to change my refresh rate to more than 60hz with my first xfree install... And what lunatic decided that ":q!" was the best way to exit an editor?? Also keep in mind that linux is community developed, there are no billions of dollars to pour into making it easy for grandma to install and use. Considering that I think it's amazing how good it is, I will never go back. Now if only game companies would port their games, and hardware vendors would take linux support seriously we'd be set. Things seem to be moving in this direction though which is great... besides what is it they say? Linux is only free if your time is worthless?

rac · Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2002 6:10 pm Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Instinct · n00b Joined: 02 Aug 2002 Posts: 74

masseya · Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2002 12:21 am Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

corrs_fan · Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2002 2:10 am Post subject:

i remember the fun i had attempting to get vi to work - nano was a walk in the park instead. Why some want the more obscure vi included in the 1.4 ISO ill never know.

synonymousca · n00b Joined: 15 Jun 2002 Posts: 62

It's because vi users butcher all files they edit with nano, what with the letters "i", "o", "q", "x", "d", and escape codes all over the place only seconds after they open the file. (Numbers, too, depending on how they navigate text files)

I think vim was the first package I added to my Gentoo system once bootstrap.sh was complete.

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

Surely you jest

klieber · Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2002 12:44 pm Post subject:

JyZude · n00b Joined: 23 Apr 2002 Posts: 15

Before we got onto the Vi vs. Emacs discussion, people were talking about the simplicity of Windows vs. the customizability of Linux. This is the madness of the OS universe! First you hate windows because it does things for you in ways you do not want (messenger). And then you say "god, I wish I could control that." So you switch to Linux and then you have the control over every little feature, and you spend all day in the Gentoo forums or surfing the web for the format of a certain config file. You say to your self "god, I need to do this myself? Why won't it do it for me?".

The problem is basically that the computer can't read your mind. So, it will either do things the way it thinks you want them and not tell you about it (Windows), or let you do it all yourself until you go totally nuts (Linux).

Your best bet to fend off the Linux control overload is to use the HOWTOs. They will tell you how to set up whatever it is as easily as possible, while providing pointers on things you may want to fiddle with to make it "perfect".

Personally, if I had more $$$ I would use Linux for most tasks, and Mac OS X for web page design and artsy stuff. When I'm doing that sort of stuff, I don't care much for the efficiency of the OS, just that it gets done easily.

I'd prefer not to use Windows at all... but I do and that's life.

pilla · Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2002 1:46 am Post subject:

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

Re: vi/xemacs mix-ups. viper in level 5 inside of (X)Emacs is really nice and gives you the best of both worlds.

vim used to put in the symlink from ex to vim in older builds, IIRC. This effectively made vi -> vim if vim was installed after vi. The new vim build does not seem to do this, unfortunately.

rojaro · l33t Joined: 06 May 2002 Posts: 732

well ... windows guesses what i want ... but linux does what i want ...
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cto2mac · Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2002 4:56 pm Post subject:

when you buy a burger at mcdonald's you get it pretty much the way that they decided, with minimal options of-course. with linux (read gentoo) you get to make the burger on your own grill. It works better, and faster. Windows is a good OS for those of us that don't want to think about what our computer is doing. (read average user) then there are us that like to know what is going on in the background of our OS to peel back the clean exterior and tinker with the settings to get it just right. No self-respecting hot-rodder would order a car from a box and follow the directions to the letter why would you, the enlightened computer user do any different?

telex4 · l33t Joined: 21 Sep 2002 Posts: 704 Location: Reading, UK

I think there are a few issues here...

First of all, most Windows users will be using it for relatively simple tasks, and Windows caters for that fairly well. It also discourages you from thinking you can ever fix things, and it is in fact very difficult to fix odd problems when compared to GNU/Linux (consider for example that you cannot do "cat /dev/eth0" and other nifty commands). So Windows users are less likely to ask questions, and have less scope within which to ask questions.

Then there's the fact that usually you learn how to do interesting things in Windows from friends, or things you read. It doesn't encourage you to explore. When you then move to GNU/Linux, you suddenly find that all the things you know about Windows don't necessarily translate to GNU/Linux, and so you ask people how to do things you used to know. You also suddenly find its enticing you into doing all kinds of interesting things... just look at the installers... when you install Windows you aren't offered the chance to install a full web server, 3D graphics studio etc. So less questions again from Windows users.

But as for the idea that GNU/Linux is more difficult, I think that depends on who the user is, and how much they do. If you think about an office, your average secretary will have their machine maintained by IT experts in the company (or contractors). If you set-up a KDE3 desktop with OpenOffice and showed it to a secretary they'd find it no more difficult than Windows. The difficult things are installation, configuring hardware, software installation (except with Gentoo

), and fixing problems that (very) occasionally surface. But learning to use, and then using apps is not very difficult.

I like to compare the situation with computers to cars. When you buy a car, you have people set it up for you, OS and all, with the options you want. You, before you drive any car, learn how to drive it. Every so often you have to take your car into a garage for a checkup (or at least you do in the UK!), and if you ever have problems with it, you take it to a professional to fix. The same applies for when you want an "upgrade" (e.g. a leaded - unleaded conversion). I'd be surprised if this didn't happen to computing... and if it did, even if it happened now, GNU/Linux would not be any more difficult to use than Windows or MacOSX.

aardvark · Guru Joined: 30 Jun 2002 Posts: 576

pilla · Posted: Sun Sep 29, 2002 11:43 pm Post subject:

Network devices are special devices (not block, not char devices) and they have special treatment. Thus, they don' t have entries under the /dev hierarchy.

Curious · Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2002 12:38 am Post subject:

jthj · Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2002 9:01 pm Post subject:

I personaly prefer to run linux even though it does less for me. Some of my reasons that are relevant to this thread come down to maintaining the box. I use Linux almost exclusivly at home. However my current employment is tech support for a dial up ISP. And I'm tier 2 to boot. So the shit I get is either someone who talked to an idiot at tier 1 or someone with a pooched OS or some other software like IE or OE. Now with 95,98 and ME I can pretty easily fix most issues. I simply hack their registry and reload all the networking components. That usualy fixes the issue. With 2k and XP that becomes more dificult. MS has made the OS more automated and more stable but a lot harder to fix. With XP you pretty much have to completely reinstall the OS to fix issues that were easily fixed in 9x versions. With linux howerver if you can boot it you can fix it. AKA if it's not a hardware problem or serious file system problem it's fixable w/o reloading the OS. So even though Linux has a higher learning curve I'll take it anyday b/c I like the comfort of know how my box works and being able to fix it. I love analogy of buying closed source software is like buying a car with the hood welded shut! It's so true.

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gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

jthj · Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2002 1:25 am Post subject:

OdinsDream · Veteran Joined: 01 Jun 2002 Posts: 1057

I know I'm not the only one to have philosophical reason, along with the technical and logical, for using linux over other OSes, but I haven't seen it in this thread yet.

I come from Win2k, and, I'll admit it, I pirated software. I dont like to admit it, but it's the truth. Sometimes it was just fun to play with, and sometimes it was just easier.

But, that's the past.

With linux, I have a fully working operating system, and not a single license violation under my belt. Every thing I use is freely available open-source software.

I have personal objections against the business practices of microsoft, and I'm proud to be running open-source software on my machine.